Welsh actor Luke Evans is quickly becoming an A-List star after recently appearing in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (he’ll reprise the role of Bard in December’s third instalment) and Dracula Untold, but his next project could bring him more critical acclaim than both of those big budget blockbusters combined!
According to a new report, Evans is set to star in Ben Wheatley’s upcoming action shootout movie Free Fire.
The movie will mark Wheatley’s first US based film after helming the likes of Kill List and Sightseers. Free Fire has a $10 million budget and will also star Armie Hammer (The Lone Ranger), Cillian Murphy (Inception), Olivia Wilde (Rush) and Michael Smiley (Black Sea). The latter has worked with Wheatley a number of times in the past. Free Fire is about an arms deal which ends up going spectacularly wrong.
The story is set in Boston in 1978. Wilde plays Justine, a woman who has brokered a meeting in a deserted warehouse between two Irishmen (Murphy, Smiley) and a gang led by Hammer and Evans, who are selling them a stash of guns. But when shots are fired in the handover, a heart-stopping game of survival ensues.
Evans will also star in Wheatley’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise (a movie which is currently in post production) which has a cast that also includes Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, and Sienna Miller.
“The idea for ‘Free Fire’ came from my love of hard-boiled crime movies; from ‘The Asphalt Jungle,’ ‘The Big Sleep,’ ‘The Killing’ and ‘The Big Combo’ through ‘The Driver,’ ‘Le Samourai’ and ‘The French Connection,’ to the modern cycle of ‘Goodfellas,’ ‘Casino,’ ‘Hard Boiled’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs,'” the director says. “’Free Fire’ will take you and stick you in the middle of the action. I want the film to have the stylish, no-nonsense feel that you get in Peckinpah’s ‘The Getaway.’ It’s a modern ‘70s movie. Muscular, tough and spare.”
